Former Chelsea and Manchester United midfielder Nemanja Matic has discussed how different it was when he made the move from Stamford Bridge to Old Trafford.
The Serbian, who now plays for Ligue 1 side Rennes, played for Chelsea between 2014 and 2017 and enjoyed a lot of success, though his spell at Man Utd between 2017 and 2022 was probably a bit less enjoyable.
Matic won two Premier League titles and the FA Cup while he was at Chelsea, but didn’t manage to pick up any silverware with the Red Devils, and his insight into the different cultures at the two clubs goes a long way to explaining what went wrong.
Speaking to YuPlanet, Matic admitted that Chelsea players were never late for training, whereas at United it happened frequently, with Jadon Sancho and Paul Pogba supposedly among the main offenders.
This sounds pretty damning for United, with Matic even feeling the need to step in with the other senior players to ensure these standards improved.
“At Chelsea, players acted professionally, they were punctual and were never late for training but at United it happened almost every day,” Matic said.
“Among the players who would always be late were Paul Pogba and Jadon Sancho and couple of other players.
“The rest of us who were always on time were angry so we decided to form a kind of an internal disciplinary committee with me serving as its president.
“I put a sheet of paper up on the wall where I documented the names of individuals arriving late. During one particular season we collected around £75,000 in fines.”
MUFC fans will no doubt be concerned that similar behaviour could still be happening, and it remains to be seen if there are senior players like Matic on hand to clamp down on any sloppy standards.